Sweetest Downfall
by saoirseronans
Summary: "I loved you first." Clato one shot, based on 'Sampson' by Regina Spektor. Rated K , R&R please.


_Hi everyone! This was just a quick one shot I got the inspiration for last night and, well, it just kind of happened pretty fast. So, this is based on 'Sampson' by Regina Spektor and I highly reccomend listening to it while you read this, it's utterly beautiful. I hope you enjoy reading this and don't feel too sad once you're done._

_love, Isabelle x_

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_Your hair was long when we first met._

I can remember. You'd come to my father's masonry for your first sword, a ten inch-er, with an iron hold and a crisp, silver blade; I can remember it, even now, quite clearly. I'd polished it that same morning until I saw my face in it. You had stood at the window for several minutes, your eyes wide with greedy wonder at the sights spread before you, before you came in with your father and brother and they brought it for you. My father took your measurements: your arm length, your height, your weight, and then he reached up to pull the sword off the wall and gave it to you.  
I was hiding around the door that lead to the workshop; I saw you. You were ten. I was about to turn nine. Your face illuminated like the lights of the Justice Building on the victory tour as you held that sword in your hand, like it was made of the purest crystal, the most precious thing you had ever seen. I was jealous then too; even the first time I saw you I felt those cold, hard pricks of envy creep under my fingers. I would have to wait another whole year before I was allowed to feel a weapon's weight in my palm.  
You turned to go and, just for a moment, your head caught the last of the fading winter sunbeams, trickling through the smears on the windowpanes, your hair blinding blonde, blazingly bright. Your hair just about brushed your shoulders, feathery thin. I held my breath. Then you were gone and the light faded too.

_The next time I saw you, I shouldn't have._

I had run away from home, not permanently, just for the night. I was always restless, nocturnal if you like. I felt more awake at night than any other time, more alert, agile; that's why we like to hunt at night, isn't it?  
I was in the meadow opposite the training centre, watching the stars dance in and out of the clouds like they were playing hide-and-seek with the moon and they were winning. I shouldn't have been there really, no one was technically allowed anymore. Not since an unexploded bomb was discovered by two girls leaving the training centre last summer. The children were still claiming they could find severed fingernails buried in the dirt up until last year.  
It was cold; the harshness of the winter nights had still not petered out into the mild, breezy spring evenings even in the middle of May. Across the town, lights at windows began to go out, as even the latest of sleepers put their books away and went to bed. I shivered.  
I saw you coming long before you saw me. You were just twelve, making me eleven, but already you were tall. I imagined you at the boys school on the other side of town, with all the little ones looking up at you with open mouths, awe radiating from their startled eyes. Once more, I felt jealous of you. No one had ever looked at me like that.  
You crossed the meadow with a purpose, your strides striking the grass with every footstep; I pictured the moles hiding under the earth trembling as the tremors shook their fragile foundations. Your eyes remained glued to the ground – until you looked up and saw me.  
Thunder seemed to rumble through your face as you quickened your step, lighting almost flashed behind the storm that had taken over your eyes.  
'You're not supposed to be here!' you yelled at me, angry more that I had startled you than anything else.  
I focused in on your hair. It was bouncing up and down on your shoulders with your motions, every so often glinting in the light of the moon.  
'Your hair's long.' At the time, it was all I could think of to say. You were in front of me then, glaring down at me.  
'Yeah, it is. So what?'  
Our first words to each other. Who would have known, from then, what we would become together, what we would become on our own? Maybe had I known, I'd have made some sort of effort to make my response a little more articulate.  
'I hate it.'  
My charm was always what you loved about me.  
'Like I would care.'  
Oh, you bit back hard. And I loved you for it.  
'I never said you should.'  
The moon came out from behind a cloud and the silvery light found you. Resting by your chin, you hair looked more platinum than blonde. It looked as if you had braided the moonlight itself into your hair.  
'You shouldn't be here,' you repeated, but your expression had softened.  
'Neither should you,' I replied, crossing my arms over my chest.  
'So?'  
'So.'  
We were perfect for each other, even then. You just couldn't see it.

_I loved you first._

I loved you long before you loved me. I suppose I loved you from that first night under the stars, with their old light shining down on us both like a blessing, or maybe a curse. I don't know when you first loved me. All I know is that I did it first.  
I loved you before that simpering bitch from One got her eyes with you, turned your head like a salivating dog and made you drool over her wide hips, big breasts and pretty, pink mouth. I'd have liked to have shoved a knife down her hot, little throat.  
Lies, I have realised, are very easy to tell. You and I are excellent liars, almost as good liars as we are killers. I may have told you many lies, but this is not one. Whatever I may say, know this: I loved you first.

_We first slept together that night on the train._

I was lying inside your arms, feeling you breath against the exposed skin on the back of my shoulder-blade. Outside, the sky was clouded. I couldn't see the stars.  
Long before the Reaping day, we had made a promise.  
'I'm going to volunteer one day.'  
'Me too.'  
You'd smiled, and it was like the sun had come out. 'Maybe we ought to go together.'  
'Alright then,' I had challenged you, without thinking. I don't think you really expected me to actually go through with it. And yet I did.  
You dislodged your arm from under my neck and stretched up. The sweet stench of your body filled my nose and I breathed you in. Shifting my weight, I turned so I could see you, propped up on your elbow, one hand resting behind your head. I reached up and tugged at a lock of your hair, still long. You winced.  
'Must you?'  
'I must.' I twisted the lock around my ring finger, feeling it's silky softness like a baby's comfort blanket. I let the strands slip away through my fingers. 'They'll make you cut it off, you know.'  
Your hand snaps closed on mine. 'What?'  
'It's true,' I continue over the heavy thumps of my heartbeat. 'They'll make you cut it off, for the parade and the arena.'  
'I won't let them.'  
'Don't be stupid.'  
You sighed in frustration and rolled away from me. I pushed myself up onto my stomach. 'I could do it for you.'  
'No chance,' you grunted, getting off the bed and wandering over to the window to stare out at the watercolour smudges of landscape flickering by as the train moved at full speed down the tracks towards the Capitol and towards one of our deaths.  
'I'd be careful,' I pressed.  
'I know you would.'  
'So what's stopping you?'  
You moved back across the room like a shadow and then you were on me, kissing me and I felt like I was drowning.  
'Do me a favour, Clove?'  
'What?'  
'Shut up.'

_I cut your hair myself that night._

Just as dawn was thinking about breaking, I eased myself out from under your warm breath and the cage of your arm and padded, bare foot, to the bathroom adjoining my bedroom. It had a nautical theme; blue and white tiles cut into perfect squares paved the walls and the floors until it felt like you were drowning in a crystal coloured swimming pool filled with blue light. I crossed the room to the mirrored cupboard over the sink and opened it. Earlier that day I had come searching for pills. Now I picked up the dull-edged silver scissors.  
I tip-toed back across the bedroom, feeling the cushioned softness of the thick carpet under my toes. The whole room was bathed in an unnatural yellow light making it feel like the sun had been covered by a thin sheet of orange paper, blotting it out. I crept back into the bed, but on your other side. You were sleeping, and when I held my hand out under your nose hot breath made the tiny hairs on the back of my hand quiver.  
Reaching down, I plucked up one thin lock of your hair and let it thread through my fingers again, just as I had so many times before. You gave a little grunt and turned onto your side. Taking a deep breath, I raised the scissors. Soon, your golden curls littered the blue satin pillowcase, like tears of sunlight raining down from the summer sky.

_You kissed me till the morning light._

You must have woken that morning to find all your hair gone and me curled up next to you, my tears staining your cheeks as well as my own. Your hands must have gone to your head, touching the new short, close-cropped feel of your hair then your eyes must have been drawn to the pillow. You must have seen the blunt scissors lying on the floor where they had slipped out of my sweaty, shaking fingers once I'd finished. I wonder if you cried too.  
You woke me up with a kiss. Then another. And another. I folded into you, perfectly matching pieces coming together, knowing I needed you even before I was fully awake. The yellow light of the room had turned pink, as the filter paper before the sun was swapped orange for rose.  
'Did I do wrong?'  
You stroked your finger across the small of my back absently. 'You done alright,' you told me quietly.  
We kissed again.  
'Cato?'  
'Hmm?'  
'I always hated it anyway.'

_I called out for you._

But even when I called out for you, I knew that you would never get there in time. A fruitless exercise, that's what our trainers would call it. A fruitless exercise with no valuable gains for either of us. But at that point, I didn't care about gains anymore, valuable or otherwise. All I wanted was you.  
The world was red now, angry red paper had blotted out the sun in such a frightening way that I found myself longing for the empty yellow of that night on the train. I was dizzy, the sky was spinning and my head was wet. Wet, I knew, with the hot sticky crimson of my blood.  
'Clove! Clove!'  
Your voice pierced the red for a moment and I saw your face above me, yet it was so far away. Your hand found mine and I could feel your heat radiating onto me; you were the sun and I was the broken branch of the tree that even your warm rays couldn't fix.  
'Stay with me,' you murmured and I almost laughed aloud. Silly boy, if I could stay with you, don't you think I would have? You'd come too late to save me now.  
'Clove,' you said. 'Your hair is red.' I felt you stroke out my hair, your fingers moving through it like silk. I knew that the blood must be flowing freely, if I had lost enough to turn my dark hair red.  
The world was fading around me now, dimming out, drawing my line of vision narrower and narrower. I centred my gaze on you, only you, still high above me but your face moving in and out of focus. If I lost enough concentration, you could almost be that same boy I first saw outside my father's shop all those years ago. Almost.  
You were my sweetest downfall. If I hadn't fallen for you, I wouldn't have been there, dying. I'd have been somewhere else, anywhere else, someone else. But oh, how sweet it had been, falling for you. I wouldn't have changed it for the world.  
'Cato?' I pooled all my remaining strength into reaching up my arm to hold your cheek in my palm.  
'Yes?'  
There was no point in concealing the truth from you now. 'I always loved your hair.'  
'But you always said that you hated it.'  
'I know. I lied.'  
I couldn't see your face anymore. And then I was gone.

_You were my sweetest downfall. I loved you first._

_Your hair was long when we first met._

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_I hope you liked it! Seriously though, if you did, a review would be appreciated. If you didn't...maybe not so much ;)_


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